One of the nation’s only surviving slave pens rests in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. There, it provides testimony of a wicked chapter in American history. As part of the 2024 FotoFocus Biennial, the Freedom Center is debuting a new short film examining the slave pen’s role as a memory keeper.
Working with Emmy Award-winning director Alphonso Wesson, the Freedom Center’s curator of social justice revisited the fields of Maysville, Kentucky, where the slave pen once stood. The film project titled Excavated: From Soil to Stars traces the journey of the sun as it rises and falls over the Kentucky crops and the land upon which the slave pen once stood.
Following a screening of the film on October 12, the filmmakers will discuss how the project is connecting people and histories across time.
The slave pen was a jail for enslaved people who were to be sold to slave markets in Natchez, Mississippi, ripping apart families in the process. Inventory records from 1835 list the names of 34 men, women and children imprisoned within the slave pen. These 34 human beings watched as beams of sun and moonlight raked through the barred windows of the slave pen, counting down days of their lives lost to the inhumanity of slavery. Excavated: From Soil to Stars traces a similar journey and ongoing archaeological research to learn more about the people imprisoned within the pen.
Beyond the film screening and conversation, the film will be presented inside the slave pen at the Freedom Center from October 11 through 13.
WHEN: 3 p.m., Saturday, October 12
WHERE: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 E. Freedom Way, 45202
WHO:
- Alphonso “Zo” Wesson, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker
- Trudy Gaba, Social Justice Curator, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center